Dan's DVD Dumpster Diving

For most of my teenage years, DVDs were my jam. As early as 10, I remember having a modest collection of action movies, comedies, and other adolescent entertainments. Around 13/14, as I started to become a dedicated film buff, I started really expanding my collection. DVDs were the primary gift for Birthdays and Christmases. Friends and friends of family would also just give me DVDs they didn't really want anymore. Some of these movies were genuine favourites of mine, others were random shit, but whatever, I was happy to take them. But like every film boy, I eventually became a film man, and had to put DVDs away in favour of Blu-Rays. Over the years as I shifted from high school to undergrad, my Blu-Rays would take prominence in my collection. Today, those Blu-Rays sit tall and proud on my shelf, while my DVDs are relegated to a leather carrying case I keep in the corner of my living room. The DVD cases, meanwhile, are collecting dust in a closet at my parents' house.

But now, those same parents want me to start hauling shit out. I'm not sure why the need my childhood closet, but they've deemed that they need it so now I need to figure out what I'm going to do with all these DVDs. I don't have enough room in my one-bedroom apartment to house all these and while I intend to keep some (yet to receive Blu-Ray releases like Dogma, Panic Room, The Abyss, True Lies) or personal favourites that I haven't gotten around to Blugrading yet (Munich, Network, Clerks) many others are going to be sold/donated.

Thing is, among these DVDs are about two dozen movies I've never actually seen before. Now on the one hand, I feel confident I could just scrap em without losing much sleep. But on the other hand, I like to make the most out of the things I own, even if those things are movies I couldn't be bothered to watch in upwards of fifteen years. In this thread, I want to chronicle my experiences of diving through these unwatched DVDs. Taking a page from Dracula, I've also used a random number generator to determine the order of this series. I was just gonna do alphabetical, but this seems more fun.

Despite this series title, I am hoping to enjoy these watches and there are at least a couple of movies ahead of me that I'm somewhat intrigued by. Others, well, there's a reason they've been left unwatched. And to my grave misfortune, the random number generator decided to spit out one of the latter to start with...


Running Scared (2006)



I'm pretty sure this movie came into my collection by way of a friend in high school unloading a bunch of DVDs he didn't want (which also got me Predator and The Big Lebowski, so, silver linings). I don't remember it ever being a gift and I certainly didn't buy it myself. There was perhaps a small window where I might have enjoyed Running Scared, but that window is long behind me. I don't think I would have liked this movie by the time I got it in high school and I positively hated it now. The film is one of the more shameless edgelord crime movies I've seen, where the filmmakers really wanna make something depraved and gritty but their only frame of reference for "the streets" are the (much better) crime films they're ripping off. It's like if David Ayer were substantially less talented than he already is. That need not be an inherent problem, Quentin Tarantino's gangsters are purely cinematic constructs after all, but Wayne Kramer is no Tarantino, as either writer or director. His characters are shallow cartoons who obnoxiously spout vulgarities, the plot little more than a thin way to connect a series of shallow violence and the odd sex scene. As director, Kramer emphasizes sensation over everything else, the camera whirling through crime scenes to trace the impact of a bullet, or framing a body flying from a shotgun blast in slow-motion...from the point of view of the shotgun. So badass. The film is akin to waving keys to distract a baby, with hyperactive cutting and consistent camera shake, presumably to keep things intense. Doesn't matter if it's a shootout between cops and crooks or a heartfelt conversation between our hero and a child, it's still hyper-active. The movie's version of gritty is also hideous desaturation, everything looking washed out and cheap.

What's most frustrating is that there is some potential in Running Scared. The basic premise of a criminal tasked with disposing of a hot weapon, failing to do so, and then having to track it down over the course of one chaotic night when it's used in a crime is a good one and the idea of an interrogation set on a blacklight hockey rink is also a fun visual, but it's all drowned out by an intensely stupid screenplay and horrendous direction. This was tedious to sit through. Amusing to think Vera Farmiga did this and The Departed the same year given they're such a perfect Goofus and Gallant pairing when it comes to edgy gangster stories. To that I want to close out with this; I recently made a video on The Film Bro, and one point I cut out was that the Film Bro lists tend to overemphasize quality cinema. Movies like The Boondock Saints are far more egregious than Pulp Fiction or Goodfellas in pandering exclusively to edgy teens and frat boys, but they're so juvenile and dated that they're not cited as much. Running Scared is that kind of movie, a film clearly enamored with how rad and cool Tarantino or Scorsese movies are, but without any of the taste, craft, or sophistication.

D-